Another packed day at the New York Asian Film Festival, and not one is like the others. You’ve got a couple dramas — one sweet, one not so much — and a surrealist black comedy. Then HELTER SKELTER returns. That’s the one with the body-horror. If anyone has been spending entire days at the fest, I’d love to hear from you. You are a person with an interesting perspective on life!

Here are today’s screenings, with pictures & summaries courtesy of the festival:

A STORY OF YONOSUKE

Saturday, July 13, 12:30 PM

North American Premiere!

Co-presented with the New York Asian Film Festival

Yonosuke arrives at university in the late 1980s, a time when Japan is booming and the economy is raining cash. Hopelessly naive, and hopelessly self-confident, he comes to the big city and annoys everyone. But slowly he finds a group of friends and then the movie jumps forward 20 years and then… to tell any more would ruin the surprise, but this is a heartfelt movie that sings the song of the unheroic hero.

DREAMS FOR SALE

(Yume Uru Futari)

Saturday, July 13, 3:45 PM

New York Premiere!

Co-presented with the New York Asian Film Festival

When Satoko and Kanya’s restaurant burns to the ground and they find themselves in dire straits, they don’t just give up, they get married–but not to each other! Despite his rather “average” looks, Kanya has a preternatural talent for romancing women, a skill that turn out to be an unorthodox but invaluable source of revenue. With Satoko’s able assistance in scoping out potential prey, they begin promising matrimony to lonely ladies before scamming them out of all their cash. As they tear through Japan’s entire population of lonely hearts, things begin to take a toll on their own marriage and their very souls.
Japan. 2012. 137 min. 35 mm, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Miwa Nishikawa. With Takako Matsu, Sadao Abe, Rena Tanaka, Sawa Suzuki, Tamae Ando.

18+ This film is unrated, but may only be viewed by persons 18 years of age and older.

IT’S ME IT’S ME

(Ore-Ore)

Saturday, July 13, 6:30 PM ***SOLD OUT***

North American Premiere!

Co-presented with the New York Asian Film Festival

Somewhere between Magritte, Kafka, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman, Satoshi Miki’s (director of ADRIFT IN TOKYO) surrealist tale of Hitoshi, a young electronics store clerk with a case of multiple person disorder (played by pop star Kazuya Kamenashi of the band Kat-Tun) boldly goes where no black comedy has gone before. After picking up a cellphone left behind by a customer, he undertakes a popular scam: he calls the person’s mother and with the open-sesame magic formula “It’s me! It’s me!” poses as her son, easily talking the mom into transferring cash to his own depleted bank account. Soon, Hitoshi gets not just a lot more money, but a new mum, and a new “me,” in the person of a doppelganger. And that’s not the end of it, the young man ends up proliferating, until the whole city becomes a metropolis of “me” (well, him) walking around everywhere. Which is great for the narcissistic young man… until they start killing each other.

HELTER SKELTER

(Heruta Sukeruta)

Saturday, July 13, 9:30 PM

New York Premiere! Co-presented with the New York Asian Film Festival

Japan’s hugely influential, hyper fashion-forward photographer Mika Ninagawa and its most controversial young star, Erika Sawajiri, team up to deliver a plastic surgery horror movie that’ll make everyone’s skin crawl. Lilico (Erika Sawajiri) is a monstrous Lady Gaga-esque celebrity, a singer and actress obsessed with her own young sexy self, eating up employees, and existing on a diet of flashbulbs. Almost entirely surgically enhanced, she requires occasional “top ups” but now they’re not working anymore. Her face and body are slowly turning as black and rotten as bruised fruit as her sanity is leaching away from her dysfunctional, surgically enhanced mortal coil.